Small business is really, really, really hard. Heather and I run one. You knew that, right? ilyAIMY’s a lot of work – and sometimes it’s very lucrative, and other times it’s a struggle to keep our heads above water. We don’t tour as much as we used to and when we’re pinned to one location it’s always a careful balance betwixt over-saturating the local area and making a Living. We can edge towards the bar band side, playing more covers and playing those grueling, often unappreciated but monetarily relatively rewarding 3 and 4 hour bar shows and play regularly at a bunch of different places, or we can spread ourselves between DC and Baltimore and Annapolis and all the little suburbs in between…. That’s just part of the equation. When we’re touring we think nothing of driving 4 hours between one show and where we’re staying the night. When we’re “home” it’s very frustrating to drive two hours for a gig, only to turn around and drive two hours back home after we’re done. Do we advertise every show evenly? Some venues want posters, some don’t. Some have Facebook pages, others don’t. Twitter reaches some people, not others.
What does the name mean? How do you pronounce it? Is it a good name? I’ve held onto it for 14 years and I’m not changing it now – is that the single worst decision I’ve ever made? Is the website too complex? Is the Journal too revealing? Is the guy I just told off now going to ruin my career? Or are the people who saw me get stepped on by that OTHER guy then going to respect us less? It’s agonizing and often I just wish someone was there to give me a path. Show us the way, we can do it!
I’m actually not TOO agonized over ilyAIMY right now. I’m having trouble writing, but that’s my only BIG complaint. I’d Love it if more venues wrote back. I’d Love to get paid more than we do. I’d Love to play 2.25 hours every night, because I like 1 hour sets, I like playing TWO sets, and I like a fifteen minute break. But really, we’re most wanted at Falcon Ridge, we stormed the HELL out of NACA, I play with some of the most fabulous humans out there, we’ve got three tours lining up ever so slowly going the three available land-based cardinal directions… I’m a pretty happy bandbeest.
The source of my business-person angst doesn’t even stem from House of Musical Traditions. Sure it’s only the Christmas rush, but it sure FEELS like the shop’s doing really well right now! Busy, busy, busy – we’re ordering cool stuff and we’re selling cool stuff and we’re repairing cool stuff and I’m meeting cool people.
The angst stems from some sympathy pangs for a friend’s business…. That’s probably doing well as well – they’ve got great food, it’s always packed when we play there, it’s a cool space – Leaky Pete’s is one of our great finds of 2011. When a person mentioned to me today that they were from Cambridge, MD I mentioned that we play Leaky Pete’s all the time! Great town!
“Oh, yeah – I was so sad to hear they’d closed.”
I assured her she was wrong, showed her the frequently and recently updated Facebook page, showed her that we were on their band calendar for next week Friday… she stood corrected and even pseudo-promised to come see the show… but it leaves me wondering how rumours like that get started. House of Musical Traditions constantly struggles against the rumour that they’ve closed. They moved a block down the street and in winter (when the leaves are gone) the new shop is WITHIN SIGHT of the old shop – and yet people are constantly surprised to find us again, convinced we’d gone out of business. Even ilyAIMY caught whiff of a weird rumour that we’d broken up. We don’t know where the rumours come from, most of the time they don’t seem malicious, but they’re damaging nonetheless.
I wonder if it’s something misheard (in which case, it’s kind of mortifying that the mishearing partner didn’t say “oh my GOD, really?” and get corrected) – a typo? The wrong tense in someone’s Facebook update? Someone reading a closing message as message of closure, someone reading a farewell as a permanent goodbye or someone typing in www.ilyamy.com by mistake, going to a non-existent website and assuming that means the band doesn’t exist anymore… there can be any number of explanations. In the case of Terry’s “Leaky Pete’s” he forwarded the theory that he’s opening a cigar shop in town and that maybe some people don’t believe he can run two businesses at the same time! Sounds like quite a leap on someone’s front!
Sigh. Anyways, it’s hard ENOUGH to run a small business. If you hear something uncharacteristic about your favourite local bar / pizza shop / game store / FREAKIN’ AWESOME BAND please check your sources and then let that business know what you’ve heard! It’s spreading a rumour if you go to someone else first – go to the source and clear up the confusion and let us know we’ve got some PR work to do!
Sigh twice. Christmas is past, New Year’s is coming, the future looks so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades. Except that I don’t. I’ll just risk being blinded by the awesome so I don’t miss a thing.
